Synopsis

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It’s not her fault if she can’t suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée’s instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René’s life, isn’t trustworthy. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway—with Meizi’s photo in his wallet.

Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can’t figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi’s disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France’s secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they’re keeping tabs on Aimée. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress, botched affairs of the heart, dirty policemen, the French secret service, cutting-edge science secrets and a murderer on the loose—what has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself—and her friends—back out of it all alive?

The timed hallway light clicked off, plunging the landinginto darkness. She shivered, closed the frosted glass doorbehind her, and hit the light switch. The chandelier’s crystaldrops caught the light and reflected in the old patinated mirrorover the fireplace.

For once the high-ceilinged nineteenth-century office waswarm, too warm. The new boiler had gone into overdrive. Hernose ran at the switch from the chill January evening to atoasty, warm office. She set down her shopping bags—Januarywas the season of soldes, the big sales. She’d blown her budget.

Et alors, yogurt and carrots at her desk for the next week.

She slung her coat over the chair and noticed a chip on herrouge-noir-lacquered pinkie. Zut. She’d have to spring for amanicure.

The office phone trilled, startling her.

“Tell me you found Meizi’s birthday present, Aimée,” camethe breathless voice of René, her business partner at LeducDetective. “The damned jeweler screwed up the delivery.”

“Small red box? You mean it’s not for me?” she joked. Sheshook the box and heard a rattle. Maybe those jade earringsshe’d seen him looking at. “You’re serious about Meizi? I mean,that kind of serious?”

“One day you’ll meet your soul mate, too, Aimée.”

Soul mate? He’d known Meizi what, two months? ButAimée bit her tongue. So unlike René to rush into something.A surge of protectiveness hit her. She ought to check this girlout, see what she could learn from a quick computer backgroundsearch. Could be a little ticking bomb, all right.

“Save my life, eh?” René said. “Bring it to the resto, ChezChun.”

“But I’m in the middle of a security proposal, René,” sheanswered, hoping he didn’t hear the little lie in her voice. Shesurveyed their bank of computers, which were running securitychecks, updating client systems she’d programmed before sheleft. The boring bread and butter of their computer security firm.

“Take a taxi, Aimée,” he said, his voice pleading. “Please.”

Meizi must have something his previous girlfriends from thedojo didn’t. Better to check her out in person. Aimée put thebox in one coat pocket and dug through the other for her cellphone.

“A taxi, with this traffic? Métro’s faster, René.”

She grabbed her leopard-print coat and locked the office door.

Twenty minutes later she ran up the Métro steps, perspiringand dodging commuters. Frustrated, she found herself at theexit farthest from where she wanted to be, by the Romanesquechurch that was now the Musée des Arts et Métiers. HarmonicGregorian chanting wafted in the cold air and drifted into theenveloping night. Petals of snow lodged like nests of whitefeathers in the bare-branched trees. What a night, the temperaturefalling, a storm threatening in the clouded sky. Thefrigid air sliced her lungs, shot up the mini under her coat.

Great. She hadn’t thought her wardrobe through, as usual.René had better appreciate this. Listen to sense and slowthings down.

She ran across the boulevard into the medieval quartier,still an ungentrified slice of crumbling hôtel particuliers, narrowcobbled streets lined by Chinese wholesale luggage and jewelryshops. Red paper lanterns hanging from storefronts shudderedin the wind. From a half-open door she heard the pebble-likeshuffling of mah-jongg tiles. This multi-block warren comprisedthe oldest and smallest of the four Chinatowns in Paris.Few knew it existed.

She reached Chez Chun, the oldest or second-oldest buildingin Paris, depending on whom you talked to, sagging and timberedbeside a darkened hair salon.

Inside Chez Chun a blast of garlic, chilis, and cloying Chinesepop music greeted her. The resto, an L-shaped affair, heldten or so filled tables. Roast ducks dangled behind the takeoutcounter. Not exactly an intimate dining spot.

René cornered her at the door. “Took you long enough,Aimée.” René, a dwarf, was always a natty dresser. Tonight hewore a new silk tie and a velvet-collared wool overcoat tailoredto his four-foot height.

“Work, René,” she said. “I’m still running programs.”

He raised his hand. “Routine. We’re good till Monday.”

She’d never seen him like this. For once work took secondplace.

“Yet look who came out in the cold,” she said, wiping thesnow from her collar. “Why so nervous?”

“Her parents.”

“Use your famous Friant charm,” she said under her breath.She pulled the gift from her coat pocket. “But why rush this,René?”

Aimée grinned, determined to thaw the atmosphere. Herblack-stockinged thigh caught on the plastic-covered seat.Under the disapproving stare of Madame Wu, she rememberedRené’s complaints about how Meizi’s parents insisted on chaperoningtheir dates.

René set the present on the table beside the steaming soup.“Happy birthday, Meizi.”

Aimée tried not to cringe. Even if it was only earrings, itwas too soon. René was nuts, or crazy in love.

Madame Wu turned and spoke to her husband. Aimée heardher sharp intonation, and could imagine what was being said.

But Meizi’s face lit up in happiness as she untied the bowand opened the jewelry box. To Aimée’s surprise, it was a ring.A pearl ring, luminous and simple. “How thoughtful, René,”Meizi gasped. “I lost my other ring at the dojo.”

He winked. “I hope the next one will sparkle more.”

Meizi blushed.

Madame Wu pulled the reading glasses down from hershort, very black hair—dyed, Aimée could see—and shook herhead. Round-faced Monsieur Wu, who was much older, avertedhis gaze.

Were they criticizing René’s gift or objecting to the relationship?Perhaps they didn’t want their daughter involvedwith a dwarf? Despite her own reservations, Aimée felt a pangfor René.

Aimée doubted that. Meizi slipped the ring on her fourthfinger. “Parfait.” Aimée noticed the bitten nails, the worncalluses on Meizi’s fingertips. Meizi set the ring back in thebox and passed out the steaming soup bowls. A large servingfor René.

Meizi’s phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at thenumber and pushed her chair back. “I’ll be right back.”

René’s hand paused on his soupspoon. “Can’t you talk later,Meizi?”

“Won’t take a moment,” she said. As Meizi went to thedoor, Aimée noticed her backward glance, her beetled brow,before she stepped outside.

The Wus, not ones for conversation, tucked into the soup.Poor René. Aimée imagined the dinners he’d shared with thehumorless Madame and Monsieur Wu. Had she read Meizi, adutiful daughter, all wrong? A young waitress cleared theirbowls, leaving Meizi’s, and brought a platter of fragrant roastedduck with shaved scallions. At least five more minutes passed.

Suddenly, the old woman shouted in Chinese. Madame Wudropped her glasses on the table.

The old woman continued, bellowing, frantic. Loud murmursand the clattering of chopsticks filled the resto. Surprised,Aimée saw diners throw money on their tables, heard chairsscreeching back in haste over the linoleum. As if at some mysterioussignal, people reached for their coats and fled in a massexodus.

Madame and Monsieur Wu stood in unison. Without aword they left the table and were out the door of the restowithout their coats. Not only rude, but unnerving.

The ring in the red velvet box sat by the teapot, forgotten.Like Meizi’s coat on the back of her chair.

“But what’s happening?” René said, bewilderment on his face.

Aimée rubbed her sleeve on the fogged-up window to seeoutside. A red glow reflected in the ice veining the cobblecracks. Firemen, an ambulance, the police?

The young waitress by the door turned down the pop music.

“What’s the matter?” Aimée asked her.

“Trouble.”

“Trouble as in a robbery?” Jewelry stores abounded in thequartier, which had once been the diamond-cutting district.

“The old lady said murder.”

“Murder? But who?”

The waitress shrugged. Her fingers worried a tattered menu.“Behind the luggage shop.”

Aimée sat up. “The luggage shop around the corner?”

The waitress nodded.

Meizi’s parents’ shop. A terrible feeling hit her. Meizi?

René had pulled on his coat and was already halfway to thedoor. Aimée scooped the jewelry box into her pocket, left awad of francs on the table, and took off behind him.

• • •

Filled with dread, Aimée hurried down the street,following René past the dimly lit Le Tango, a dance club emittinga reverberating drumbeat. No one stood outside. It was toocold for the usual drunken brawls. A horn blared streets away.

A flash of red disappeared around the corner. Madame Wu.

Aimée glimpsed a few Chinese people crowding the shortwalkway behind the luggage shop. The dark walkway betweenthe buildings was crowded with garbage bins, wood palettes,old cart wheels, the view ending in a dim red lantern shiningon back stairs. Not a hundred yards from the resto. Her shoulderstightened.

“Meizi lives here above the shop.” René panted, his breathfrosting in the cold. The windows he pointed to were dark.Where were the Wus?

Aimée fought a rising panic, picking her way through Chinesepeople of all ages, mumbling and scraping their feet onthe ice.

“Has someone been . . . ?” Aimée’s question was interruptedby a woman’s piercing scream. People jostled her shoulder asthey ran away, their footsteps thudding on the snow. Shiveringin the cold and full of misgivings, Aimée crossed the nowdeserted walkway.

Not Meizi, non . . . don’t let it be Meizi.

A rat, fat and brown, its tail the length of its long, wet,furred body, scurried down the steps over the new-fallen snow.It left a trail of red in its wake.

At the foot of the crumbling stone stairs by Meizi’s door, aman’s snow-dusted trouser-clad leg sprawled from a woodenpalette. She gasped. Bits of gnawed, bloody flesh, orange peels,and black wool threads trailed in the snow. Good God. Herstomach lurched. The rat.

Aimée couldn’t peel her horrified gaze from the corpse,which was half wrapped in clear plastic, the kind used to securemerchandise to palettes. The man’s matted red hair, prominentnose, and cheekbones all melded, smooth and tight, under theclear plastic. Her gaze traveled to his wide, terrified eyes, thento his mouth, frozen open in a snowflake-dusted scream.

She stumbled and caught herself on the ice-glazed wall.Who was he? He hadn’t been here long, judging by the lightcoating of snow. Where was Meizi?

“Mon Dieu,” René said, stepping back. He took a few stepsand pounded on Meizi’s back door.

No answer.

Aimée gathered up her long leopard-print coat and steppedwith care around the dirtied snow, avoiding the overturnedgarbage bin’s contents.

Her insides churned. She shouldn’t have looked at the eyes.

A pair of black-framed glasses lay in the snow beside hisgnawed calf. Crinkled papers, a half-open wallet. Using a dirtyplastic bag to cover her hands, she picked the wallet up. Nocash or credit cards. Cleaned out.

Wedged deep in the wallet’s fold she found a creased Conservatoiredes Arts et Métiers library card with an address andthe name Pascal Samour. The photo showed a younger versionof the pale face in plastic before her.

She turned the card over.

“Put that down, Aimée,” René said.

Stuck to the other side of the library card by gummy adhesivewas a smudged photo of a Chinese girl with a glossy ponytail.Meizi. “But look, René.”

“Someone reported this incident,” the pompier medicshouted, his blue anorak crunching with snow. “Was that you?”

Aimée shook her head.

His colleague brushed past her with his resuscitator equipment.He pulled on latex gloves, took out clippers and snippedthe plastic away, revealing that the man’s wrists were boundbehind him. The medic felt the man’s carotid artery. A formality.He shook his head.

A shout erupted. A bedraggled figure came down a side staircaseshaking his fist. He wore a matted fur coat, a sleep mask onhis forehead, and orange slippers. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Aimée hadn’t noticed the crumbling stairs, the brickedupwindows. Or the Permis de Demolir sign on the building.Condemned.

“How many times have we told you to stay in the shelter,Clodo?” said the second medic.

About Cara Black

Cara Black lives in Noe Valley with her bookseller husband, Jun, owner of Foto-Graphix Books, and her son, Tate. She's a San Francisco Library Laureate, Macavity and three time Anthony award-nominee for her series, Aimée Leduc Investigations, set in Paris.

Praise

Praise

"Outstanding.... Readers will relish realistic villains and an evocative atmosphere that begs for a trip to the City of Lights."—Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)

“The Paris investigator is a perpetual-motion machine, and she’s almost always inappropriately dressed for highspeed galivanting: heels, miniskirts, leopard prints—Aimée never sacrifices style for convenience…. Thickening her plot like a French chef stirring coq au vin, Black throws a murdered scientist, a human-trafficking scandal, the Knights Templar, and revelations about Aimée’s long-presumed-dead mother into the pot, leaving readers nearly as breathless as Aimée, who hurtles her way toward the conclusion. Fans of the series know the formula and don’t mind a bit that it rarely varies. Paris never needs a new look, and neither does Aimée Leduc.” —Booklist

“The pace accelerates as fast as Aimee’s Vespa. The details of the series, Aimee’s love of vintage couture, her love life, and the specter of her mother’s disappearance, all make welcome appearances here. Murder at the Lanterne Rouge is wonderfully plotted, and Cara Black ties together the past and present with élan.” —New York Journal of Books

Praise for the Aimée Leduc series:

"Transcendently, seductively, irresistibly French."—Alan Furst

"Wry, complex, sophisticated, intensely Parisian.... One of the very best heroines in crime fiction today."—Lee Child

"So authentic you can practically smell the fresh baguettes and coffee."—Val McDermid